BAMIAN --  Samila, a young woman in a black dress with stylish sunglasses, is serious about the Parliamentary elections.

“I want to vote for someone who has risen from among the people, who understands the pain of the war-weary Afghans,” she said. “I want someone who represents the poor.”

Studying the campaign poster of a candidate pasted on a wall, she said that she wanted to hear more about programs and platforms.

“People trusted the empty slogans and pretty pictures of the candidates in the last elections,” she explained. “Almost no one paid attention to their platforms and their plans. A lot of people were deceived.”

Afghans will go to the polls on September 18 in the nation’s second Parliamentary elections since the fall of the Taliban. Samila, like many voters, hopes that lessons have been learned from previous elections, especially the presidential poll last year, which was marred by reports of large-scale fraud.

“People should turn out in large numbers and vote knowledgeably,” she said. “I hope there is no fraud. If the elections are transparent, then we will have a good and professional Parliament, which will benefit ordinary people.”

But Samila’s trust in the process is not shared by all the potential voters of Bamian.

Many are afraid that the vote-rigging and other abuses of previous elections will be repeated. They fear that the Independent Election Commission (IEC) may participate in the fraud, as they are accused of doing in the presidential poll last August.

“The people of Bamian do not believe in the elections,” said Hussein Ali, a farmer. “The widespread fraud last time showed us that our votes have no value.”

Mohammad Zarif, a resident of Bamian city, agrees.

“Judging by previous elections, the IEC could do anything in remote areas, where there are no observers,” he said. “The only solution is for international and domestic monitoring bodies to pay very close attention to the process.”

But some observers dismiss these concerns, saying that reports of fraud in past elections were exaggerated.

“There were very few complaints about fraud in Bamian in previous elections,” said Ismail Zaki, coordinator for Bamian’s Human Rights and Civil Society Network.

Bu even those who say that fraud was low during the last elections fear that this time the IEC may be less than objective in its work. A number of issues, such as President Hamid Karzai’s legislative decree giving the executive body greater control over the IEC and the complaints commission, have made voters uneasy.

Civil rights activists in Bamian issued a statement several days ago expressing their doubts. It was published in Tafahoom, a bi-weekly magazine, and pointed to the recruitment of IEC in what many saw as a biased manner; lack of access to election information; and the lack of responsiveness towards the media on the part of the IEC.

“There was a high turnout in Bamian during the previous elections, and there was little open fraud,” said the statement. “But this time the impartiality of the IEC is in doubt and the people do not trust the commission. If this continues, the transparency of the elections will be called into question.”

But Ansari, the head of the IEC’s Bamian office, rejects such allegations and says that the IEC is prepared to conduct a free, fair and transparent election in Bamian.

“We have developed policies to prevent fraud,” he said.